El Paso Country Club event showcases pro golfers for a cause

4:05 p.m. EST, May 7, 2012|Bill Knight, El Paso Times, Texas

The professionals make the game look almost easy ... effortless.

If you want an up-close look at golf-made-effortless -- and help a good cause -- visit El Paso Country Club on Saturday afternoon for the annual Skins Game that benefits the First Tee of Greater El Paso.

Former UTEP standouts and longtime professionals Paul Stankowski, J.P. Hayes and Chris Baryla will join Steve Haskins, a longtime professional on both the Nationwide and Champions tours, former Miner standout and current LPGA member Gerina Mendoza Piller, and current UTEP golf coach Scott Lieberwirth in a nine-hole skins game ... nine holes of good golf, fun golf and, quite probably, some good-natured bantering.

"It's great of all these players to give of their

time and help our program," said Kristi Albers, executive director of El Paso's First Tee and herself a veteran of more than 20 years on the LPGA Tour. "They are all great players and it should be a fun event."

The First Tee is a golf program aimed at teaching young players core values of golf and of life. It was initiated in 1997 and has spread around the world. Albers got the local version of the First Tee program started in the summer of 2008 and it has grown quite a bit. Home base is at Ascarate Golf Course, but it has expanded.

"It's going really well," she said. "We got into 15 elementary schools this year. We have four sets of equipment and each school has it for three weeks. All of a sudden, we go from reaching 500 kids to

8,000 kids. The P.E. teachers teach it and we trained 27 P.E. teachers in September so we could implement this program."

The program is based on nine core values -- honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment.

"The First Tee Program is a great one," Haskins said. "It teaches kids something that's too often missing today -- good manners and good etiquette ... and not just on the golf course.

"There are life lessons, regardless if you become a great golfer or not. Golf can teach you a lot about life ... about maintaining your composure and to keep trying."

The group of professionals is an impressive one. They will put on a clinic at 12:30 p.m. and then take their games on the old course at El Paso Country Club.

Hayes has won more than $8 million and Stankowski has won more than $7 million, both on the PGA Tour. Haskins was a standout at New Mexico State and played on the Nationwide Tour for many years before moving on to the Champions Tour. Baryla, a recent standout at UTEP, is now on the PGA Tour.

Mendoza Piller was a Conference USA individual champion for UTEP, then had a successful run on the Futures Tour and has now moved on to the LPGA Tour. She was also something of a television celebrity, appearing on The Golf Channel's Big Break series. Lieberwirth, who played at NMSU, was the Big West Conference champion in 1999 and the Big West MVP in 2000. He is just completing his first season as UTEP's head coach after a successful run at NMSU.

This is the second annual fundraiser for the First Tee. It was originally scheduled last November, but bad weather forced its postponement.

"We're excited and we hope people will come out and watch some great golf and have a good time with these special players," Albers said.

"We're happy to have this at El Paso Country Club, and it was just great of them to let us use their course."

It will be a relaxed atmosphere, a fun and beautiful setting around the lush El Paso Country Club layout and, if you want to see firsthand and how easy this crazy, frustrating, beautiful game can look (even though it never is), follow these six players Saturday afternoon.